278 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



genuine experience. Thus our knowledge of men 

 gradually acquires the accuracy and precision 

 needful, in order that we may act upon it se- 

 curely. In gathering such knowledge, in learn- 

 ing how to live rightly, our early education 

 ought to help us. Reasoning is reasoning, and 

 its canons are substantially the same, whether 

 flowers, or triangles, or participles, or human na- 

 ture constitute the matter reasoned about. By 

 reasoning out what we know, we make knowledge 

 lead to wisdom ; we become civilized as we grow 

 older. If the vast body of truths constituting 

 modern science could have been miraculously told 

 to our mediaeval ancestors, an imposing quantity 

 of pretentious scholarship might have been called 

 into existence, but the world would not have 

 become civilized much the sooner. It is the con- 

 scious effort put forth in making all these dis- 

 coveries which has worked the profound modifi- 

 cation of mind and character called civilization. 

 Humanity could not, after toilfully elaborating 

 the laws of gravitation and chemical affinity, re- 

 main as barbarous and untutored as before. This 

 was in part what Lessing had in his mind, when 

 he said that if God were to hold in his right hand 

 perfect truth, and in his left hand the untiring 

 search for truth, he would unhesitatingly choose 



